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COMMONWEALTH 
OR EMPIRE 



BY 



A BYSTANDER 



Partly reprinted from '■''The Toronto Weekly Sun.''' 



Toronto : Wm. Tyrrell & Co. 
1900 



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COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE 



Whatever may be for Americans the main issue in 
the Presidential campaign, for the world at large it is 
that between Imperialist Plutocracy, and the American 
Commonwealth. Shall the American Commonwealth 
remain what it is, follow its own destiny, and do what 
it can to fulfil the special hopes which humanity has 
founded on it, or shall it be turned into an imitation of 
European Imperialism and drawn, with the great mili- 
tary powers of Europe, into a «3areer of conquest and 
domination, impairing at the same time its own demo- 
cratic character^ as all experience tells us that it must? 
Shall it be ruled by the spirit and in the interest of 
the American people, or in those of the European ized 
plutocracy which has its commercial centre in the fin- 
ancial offices of the East and its social centre in the 
drawing-rooms of New York? This is the main issue 
for humanity. 

Puritan New England could not last, though it served 
as the foundation, and left strong traces on national 
character. America w^as bound to undergo the general 
influences of the world's progress and to be embi-aced 
by the world-unifying agencies of electricity and 
steam. The original elements had been largely diluted 
by foreign inflow, which, however, had been assimilated 
in a wonderful degree. Still, the American Republic 
was the home of democracy and the hope of labor. It 
promised to do something more than the Old World 
communities towards rectifying the injustice of nature 
and equalizing the human lot. The eyes of the masses 
everywhere were turned to it. To the enemies of 
equality and freedom everywhere it was an object of 
aversion and alarm. Loud was the shout of exultation 



4 COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 

with which, at the moment of secession, aristocracy and 
plutocracy in Europe hailed its apparent fall. Freedom 
from Socialism, other than imported, proved the general 
soundness of the industrial republic. 

There was reason at all events to hope that human- 
ity would here be rid of two of its banes in the Old 
World, State Churches and standing armies. Where 
there was no danger of war there could be no occasion 
for a standing armj' beyond what might be necessary 
for the maintenance of order in a community receiving 
foreign elements little trained in their countries of 
origin to recognize any authority but force. The inter- 
nal conflict caused by slavery was at an end. Nothing 
apparently was left to give birth to war. The war 
with Spain, that most ardent of patriots, John M. 
Forbes, held, as his biography tells us, to have been 
made for the purpose of keeping a political party in 
power. It seemed that peace might be preached to 
all peoples and governments more effectually than any 
conference could preach it by the spectacle of a mighty 
nation thriving beyond all other nations by honest 
industry and living on friendly terms with all its com- 
peers, yet, as a power, respected by the whole world. 

But the resources of the continent, marvellously de- 
veloped, and financial speculation have bred a body 
of wealth having its centre in the East, headed by a 
fabulous multi-millionairism, entrenched in a multi- 
plicity of great corporations and trusts, daily absorbing 
money and extending its influence, feeling more and 
more the general unity of its interests, and threatening, 
if its ascendancy is not moderated, to dominate the 
State. For some time the class was timid, shunned pol- 
itics, rather shrank from sight, fearing that public jeal- 
ousy might be aroused. Now it is past that stage and 
is beginning to turn its wealth into power. This it may 
do to an indefinite extent. It may buy legislatures. 



COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 5 

judiciaries, mimicipalities, perhaps even Churches. 
A Senatorship we have seen it purchase without dis- 
guise. It may command the public journals and thus 
control public opinion. It may kill commercially any- 
one who opposes it. Even universities, fed by its 
bounty, may fall under its political influence. A 
limit can hardly be set to the extension of its power in 
an age in which the universal object of desire is money 
with the .enjoyment which money provides. 

No one who is right-minded can desire to array 
labour against capital or to interfere by violent mea- 
sures of repression with fair gains, with the discharge 
by capital of its necessary functions in the conduct of 
industry, or with its just mfluence in the political 
sphere. But it would be an evil day on which supreme 
power should pass into the hands of accumulated 
money. Of the wealth, much has been made by the 
organization of industrial enterprises beneficial to the 
community at large, while some has been made in 
ways not so beneficial. Not a little has been nobly 
spent on public objects and institutions. But the best 
of multi-millionaires leaves heirs. 

It is useless to rail at a class for following its natur- 
al bent. Multi-millionairism does no more. Its luxury 
and ostentation are as natural as they are conspicuous. 
A famous ball bespoke at once its profuse magnificence 
and its disregard of democratic sentiment. At heart it 
sighs for a court and for aristocracy. It is even intro- 
ducing the powder-headed footman while he is going 
out of fashion in England. Its social centre is shifting 
more and more from the United States to monarchical 
and aristocratic England, where it can take hold on 
the mantle of high society, get more homage and sub 
serviency for its wealth, hope perhaps in the end to win 
its way to the circle of royalty, and, if it becomes nat- 
uralized, to obtain a knighthood or even a peerage. It 



6 COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 

barters the hands of its daughters and its millions for 
aristocratic connection. One of its leading members 
has just abandoned his native country for the country 
of his class, while he continues to draw a royal income 
from the industry of New York. Its growth on the 
body politic may be, as we are told it is, the operation 
of natural law. But so are growths on the physical 
body, against which, nevertheless, we guard. 

That the plutocracy is at once conscious of the gen- 
eral identity of its interests, and feels that Imperialism 
is congenial to it, is shown by the unanimity with 
which it ranges itself under the Imperialist banner in 
this contest. Even with Silver magnates the bias of 
class, it appears, is stronger than that of Silver. 

If you have an Empire, you will, under one form or 
another, have an Emperor. You cannot help commit- 
ting a measure of autocratic power to the head of the 
executive, thereby changing his character and the 
character of the constitution. President McKinley is 
an autocrat in regard to the acquired possessions of the 
United States, if they are not covered by the constitu- 
tion. The Queen, constitutional in Great Britain, is an 
Empress in India ; though in this case the government 
of the Empire has been effectually separated from that 
of the constitutional country by delegation to a vice- 
roy, with an entirely separate service. 

A standing army is the necessary appendage of 
Empire, and it brings with it not only the means of 
armed repression in case of conflict between the hold- 
ers of power and the people, but the military spirit of 
absolutism and professional caste, which is congenial to 
oligarchic and adverse to democratic sentiment; as 
Germany, dragooned by her military aristocracy, too 
well knows. 

The ai'iny at home, though constitutionally under the 
command of the President, is practically under the con- 



COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 7 

trol of the same democratic influences by which the ex- 
ecutive generally is controlled. The army in the de- 
pendencies would be more absolutely at the President's 
command. 

The change would soon extend to the spirit of the 
American people. The effect is already seen. Lan- 
guage on questions between right and force at vari- 
ance^ not only with the Declaration of Independence, 
but with anything that would have been heard fifty 
years ago, may now be read in the Imperialist press. 
It is true that there is throughout the Avorld a tendency 
of sentiment in this direction ; that evolution and the 
survival of the fittest have been everywhere propagat- 
ing the gospel of force ; while the gospel of human 
brotherhood, justice, and mercy, preached by Jesus and 
professed by Christian nations, has been losing influence 
even with Churches. Yet, apart from this general ten- 
dency, the immediate effect of Imperialism on Ameri- 
can sentiment may be distinctly seen. 

A relapse, not only from American but from civil- 
ized principle, has already taken place. In all defences 
of the sanguinary subjugation of the Filipinos it is as- 
sumed that the people were sold and bought with the 
land. Under the feudal system the serfs were sold and 
bought with the land, though in the case of the free 
tenants attornment was required. The general idea 
that the people, as a matter of course, passed with the 
land by cession or transfer long afterwards prevailed. 
But it has been discarded by modern civilization. When 
Savoy was transferred from Sardinia to France^ a plebis- 
cite was taken. In the case of the Ionian Islands the 
desire of the people to be transferred from Great Brit- 
ain to Greece had been clearly expressed. The treaty 
for the transfer of St. Thomas from Denmark to the 
United States was made conditional on the assent of the 
inhabitants, to be taken by vote, as it actually was. 



8 COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 

though the treaty afterwards went off on other grounds. 
Newly-created monarchies are now entitled ^not of the 
land but of the people ; Louis Philippe was King, not of 
France but of the French ; Napoleon III. was Emperor 
of the French ; Wilhelm II. is not Emperor of Ger- 
many, but German Emperor. In the case of Alsace 
and Lorraine the transfer of land and people together 
was by the stern right of conquest in a war in which 
the people had taken part. This cannot be pleaded in 
the case of the Filipinos, who had been recognized by 
the Americans as allies in the war against Spain. The 
language which has been held on this subject by Impe- 
rialist speakers and journalists grates harshly on the 
ear of modern morality. Nor can anything be less 
relevant as precedents than the natural extension of the 
American people over the unpeopled spaces of their 
own continent, or the acquisition of Louisiana, with the 
tacit assent of its inhabitants, and provision for their 
incorporation into the Union, before the expedient of a 
plebiscite had become known. 

Is it impossible that a democracy, without any formal 
change of its constitution, should pass under the yoke 
of wealth ? History furnishes at least one notable in- 
stance of the kind. The Republic of Florence, without 
change of its political forms, was effectually enslaved 
by the wealth of the Medicis. Florence was small, 
it is true. But so was the wealth of the Medicis com- 
pared with the collective fortunes of the United States. 
Nor had the Medicis, at the time of their usurpa- 
tion, a standing army, which American plutocracy avUI 
soon have, on a large scale, if Imperialism gains the day. 

The tendency of Imperialism to an increase of the 
power of the executive, at the expense of the represen- 
tative is already seen in England, where the House of 
Commons has of late been manifestly losing power 
while the Ministry has manifestly been gaining it. 



COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 9 

This is so evident that a writer of mark on female suf- 
frage doubts whether it is worth the while of the 
women to strive for parliamentary representation when 
the authority of Parliament is so clearly on the wane. 
The tendency of war to exalt the executive at the ex- 
pense of the representative will not be denied. The 
War of Secession made the President for the time 
almost a dictator, though Lincoln's character was a per- 
fect security against usurpation. 

War^ and everything that excites the passion for war, 
favours political reaction by turning the thoughts of the 
people away from internal improvement and reform. 

The British polity is founded on traditional attach- 
ment to a constitution handed down, with successive 
developments, from the Middle Ages. The American 
polity is founded on allegiance to principles such as are 
set forth in the Declaration of Independence. If alleg- 
iance to these great principles is renounced, as by the 
forcible assumption of dominion over other communi- 
ties or races it must be, the moral foundations of the 
Republic will be shaken, and the sentiment which in 
American hearts has taken the place of European loy- 
alty, will lose its sustaining power. 

A subtle influence had already been at work to un- 
dermine the originality and independence of American 
character, aims, and institutions. The United States, 
after all, are colonies thrown off from an adult civiliza- 
tion. The general verdict of history is that greatness 
comes, not from colonies so thrown off, but from the 
wild-stock which has the germ of independent life in it- 
self. The G-reater Greece was much the lesser in any- 
thing but bulk. Little, except of a material kind, has 
hitherto come of the colonies thrown off from adult 
civilizations in later days, such as those of Spain, Portu- 
gal, Holland, or France. They have lacked the germ 
of original and independent life. The American colon- 



lo COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 

ies of Great Britain were founded not merely by emi- 
gration, but by s(3cession, religious or social, and were 
ultimately torn away from the mother country by a 
political convulsion. These things combined seemed to 
give them a life-germ of their own. A marked and 
even bitter antagonism was for- some time the result. 
This, so far as the American plutocracy is concerned, 
has now given way to the force of social attraction. 
That the ancient antagonism should cease, that every 
trace of angry memories should be effaced, and that 
international bitterness should give place to perfect 
amity, is what right-minded men on both sides desire 
and do their best to bring about. But it is not desir- 
able, either for America or for humanity, that Ameri- 
can civilization should be re-absorbed into that of the 
Old Country, or that the original and independent life 
of America should be lost. 

Participation with the British Empire in aggrandize- 
ment is held out as a new life to the American 
people. Principally by maritime war, Great Britain has 
acquired a miscellany of possessions. Imperial and col- 
onial, scattered over the globe. For their protection 
she is compelled to keep up a fleet such as will make 
her mistress of all seas, thereby, perhaps involuntarily, 
threatening the maritime independence of other nations, 
which, to avoid passing under her naval yoke, think 
themselves obliged to vie with her in lavishing on the 
building of battleships the bread taken from the 
mouths of their people. The people of the United 
States have no interest in dominating over all the 
seas, nor any inducement to partake of the general 
envy and enmity which such domination inevitably 
breeds and which are already felt by Great Britain to 
be assuming a dangerous form. 

Americans are tempted to embrace a policy of tribal- 
ism, under the foi-m of a league of the Anglo-Saxon 



COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. ii 

race, which is to overshadoV the world. A return to 
tribalism sounds like relapse into barbarism. Besides, 
the tribal unity in this case is largely fictitious. In 
the United Kingdom, three-fourths of Ireland, the High- 
lands of Scotland, almost the whole of Wales and the 
West of England are Celtic, not to mention a large scat- 
tering of Flemings, Huguenots, and other immigrants. 
In the United States there is a great mixture of races. 
There was a mixture in the original foundations, and 
there has been a vast inflow of motley immigration. 
The population of the United States is not tribal but 
human ; human also ought to be its policy. That the 
English language is spoken and that English law and 
institutions have been largely adopted by the great 
community of the New World is matter of just pride for 
Englishmen. But we do not want the New World to be 
turned out of its course and made untrue to its destiny 
by an ethnological fancy plainly at variance with fact. 
Nor should it be forgotten that Great Britain carries 
with her not only her fifty millions of English-speaking 
people, but her three hundred millions and more of Hin- 
doos and other races differing as widely as possible 
from the Anglo-Saxon type. 

A league of States in different parts of the globe, 
bound together merely by origin or language, yet sworn 
to fight in each other's quarrels, whatever the cause 
and without regard to the merits of the case, would be 
a conspiracy against international morality and the- in- 
dependence of all nations such as would soon compel 
the world to take arms for its overthrow. Nobody 
would be cajoled by such phrases as " spreading civil- 
ization " or " imposing universal peace." The world 
does not want to have anything imposed on it by an 
Anglo-Saxon league or by a combination of any kind. 

Commercial gain would be the real object, commer- 
cial cupidity would be the sustaining principle of the 



12 COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 

league. But in their commercial policy the two nations 
at present are diametrically opposed to each other; 
Great Britain being for free trade, America being for 
protection. That Great Britain will ever renounce free 
trade, under which her wealth has multiplied, seems 
about as likely as that the Thames will reverse its 
course. Mutterings of reaction, political rather than 
economical in their source, and local rather than 
national^ are heard from time to time ; but they die 
away. 

Americans are exhorted to embrace '' the strenuous 
life." Is it not a strenuous life that has produced the 
United States with all their marvels of wealth, intelli- 
gence, and civilization ? Is nothing strenuous but ex- 
ternal aggression ? 

The American constitution is not suited for playing 
the British game. In England foreign policy remains 
in the same hands enough to preserve its continuity 
and the general identity of its aims. A Foreign Minis- 
ter, retiring from office, still sits in Parliament and still 
has his voice in the councils of the State ; while the 
Foreign Office is largely in the hands of permanent 
officers of the highest chiss. But an American Secre- 
tary of State, retiring from office, hardly ever takes his 
seat in Congress, so that the thread of an Imperialist 
policy would be abruptly broken off every four years, 
and there could hardly be community of design or con- 
tinuous co-operation with the Foreign Office of Great 
Bi'itain. Instead of unity of counsels, angry divergence 
might result. Nor does it seem likely that the demo- 
cratic character of the American Republic could be so 
comjilctely eliminated from its diplomacy as to make it 
an apt yoke-fellow for a monarchical and aristocratic 
country like Great Britain. The monarchical and aris- 
tocratic influence in Great Britain has been consider- 
ably strengthened, as it was sure to be, b^^ Imperialism 



COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 13 

and militarism, wliich commend themselves to reaction- 
ists on that account. 

The reason given for this sudden tendency to alliance 
with British Imperialism is the interposition of Great 
Britain to prevent action on the part of the other Euro- 
pean powers adverse to the United States in the case of 
the war with Spain. The fact has been denied by the 
other powers, nor has any proof of it been given. It 
may safely be said, however, that this, if a genuine, was 
not the sole cause. There were combined with it pluto- 
cratic affinity and sympathy^ which found a fair occa- 
sion for their display under the guise of gratitude for 
the British intervention. 

It is with the Tory party in England, the party of 
sympathy with Secession, that the United States are 
being drawn into alliance. Let it not be forgotten that 
there is in England a Liberal party, the constant friend 
of the United States, anti-Imperialist itself and the ally 
of American anti-Imperialists, at present depressed by 
the war fever, but likely, when national health returns, 
to recover its power. The language of the Democratic 
platform about Great Britain needs modification in this 
respect. 

Politicians who propose to discard the advice of 
Washington and enter the councils of the great Euro- 
pean powers appeal to the pride of the American people. 
Yet not to pride of the highest kind ; for the transfor- 
mation of the Commonwealth into the counterpart of a 
power of the Old World would be an imitation, and in 
imitation there is always something poor. Like an 
American heiress married into an aristocratic family, 
America in that circle would always be a new-comer. 
Independence, miscalled isolation, is not impotence. By 
virtue of it America has enjoyed moral influence and a 
hold on the popular sentiment everywhere. It is doubt- 
ful Avhether Mr. Chamberlain would have ventured on 



14 COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 

the South African war had he not been assured at least 
of benevolent neutrality at Washington. If the Com- 
monwealth yearns for a nobler part, a nobler part may 
be found, not in partnership with predatory powers, but 
rather in morally upholding against them human inde- 
pendence and the rights of the family of nations. 

How could that charter of the independence of 
the hemisphere, the Monroe Doctrine, be sustained if 
the United States were interfering all over the w^orld ? 

In the East the name of America must surely be 
better, and her influence over those races greater, if she 
stands aloof from European powers, to whose aggres- 
sive attitude this fearful uprising of Chinese nationality 
is immediately due. 

Expansionists, the party of Empire call themselves. 
But no name could be less appropriate. Expansion 
means extension without breach of continuity, tei ritor- 
ial or political, such as was the enlargement of the 
Union by the incorporation of new States. The annex- 
ation of an archipelago on the other side of the globe, 
inliabited by a race or races in all respects radically 
alien, is not expansion but dispersion. The new States 
need no army or fleet to hold them ; nor, as territories 
before their admission to the Union, are they dependen- 
cies ; they are probationary States. 

Continental Union, formed with the free consent of 
Canada and of her mother country, would be expansion 
in the true sense of the tei-m. It would bring into the 
Republic a long stretch of adjoining territory inhabited 
by people of the same blood and trained under similar 
institutions. It would complete the unity of the north- 
ern continent and shut the gate on war. The natural 
products of Canada's forests, mines, and water-power, 
as well ;is her special farm pioducts, are needed by the 
United States, while Canada needs the manufactures 
whicii the United States, liaving an immense market, 



COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 15 

produce on the largest scale and therefore at the cheap- 
est rate. Nor is it very doubtful that had statesman- 
ship reigned at Washington, Continental Union might 
have been brought about ; though, as it is, the face of 
the Canadian producer is being forcibly turned away 
from his own continent to Europe. In the Republican 
platform of 1896 Continental Union was a plank. It 
has now been struck out. The immediate cause of the 
omission, no doubt. Is the tacit alliance of the Repub- 
lican party with the Conservative party, which is now 
dominant in England and is intensely opposed to Con- 
tinental Union, hoping always in its heart to found in 
Canada a power differing in spirit and institutions from 
the democracy of the United States. But plutocracy 
also cannot help viewing with secret, perhaps half un- 
conscious complacency, the outpost of monarchy and 
aristocracy with its little court and miniature peerage 
on this democratic hemisphere. This again is but a 
natural tendency, about which it would be folly to utter- 
hard words but of which it is necessary to take note. 

Pitt tried to found an order of hereditary nobility in 
Canada. The soil of the New World refused to nourish 
the exotic plant. But now a mode of introducing aris- 
tocracy and aristocratic sentiment into the New World 
has been found. British titles, including peerages, 
are conferred upon colonial politicians and capitalists. 
The Canadian Almanac comprises a miniature peerage, 
baronetage, and knightage. An American can obtain a 
title by transferring himself, like Sir William van 
Home, to the other side of the line. 

If ever there was a sight to touch the truly American 
heart, it was that of the burghers of the Transvaal 
going forth, from the grey-haired grandsire down to the 
child of sixteen, with the tearful blessing of the wife 
and mother, to defend, against overwhelming power, 
the independence of their little State and the homes^ 



1 6 COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 

'Which they had made for themselves in the wilderness. 
The struggle of the American yeomanry against the 
armies of George III. was repeated in a more striking 
form. To the truly American heart, as to the hearts of 
true Liberals in England, the sight appealed not in vain. 
But the hearts of the American plutocracy were against 
the Boer. So was the plutocratic press. A charity 
•concert for the wounded, which was practically an anti- 
Boer demonstration, was attended, we were told, by all 
the best society of New York. 

The British Empire will furnish America with no 
model for Imperial administration. British India is an 
Empire by itself, pi'actically severed from Great Brit- 
ain, though politically under the same crown. Its 
Viceroy is its real emperor. It has a civil sei'vice of its 
own, filled by competitive examination. Thus there is 
little danger on either side of political contagion or cor- 
ruption. Political contagion was feared by Mill and 
others who opposed the transfer of India from the 
East India Company to the crown. But the severance 
has been maintained. The Queen is not allowed to as- 
sume the title of Empress in Great Britain, nor is her 
position or that of the Prime Minister towards the Brit- 
ish people seriously affected by the connection. A 
President of the United States could hardly delegate 
his authority over dependencies to viceroys, nor could 
a separate civil service for American dependencies be 
easily formed. The American constitution, as it is at 
present, seems to repel external dominion. It might be 
amended for that purpose, but hardly without funda- 
mental change. 

Equally unavailable as a model are the self-governed 
colonics of Great Britain, wrongly included under the 
denomination of Empire, while they are practically in- 
dependent States. The only real remnants of political 
dominion over them left to the mother country are the 



COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 17 

appellate jurisdiction of the British Privy Council, and 
the power of the crown, as the fountain of honour, to 
bestow the titles which colonial politicians prize, and 
by which their conformity to Imperial policy is subtly 
secured. The Imperial Government has a constitu- 
tional power of vetoing colonial legislation, but this is 
■almost a dead letter except in cases in which colonial 
legislation directly conflicts with Imperial laws or in- 
terests. The colonial constitutions are, in form, Im- 
perial Acts of Parliament, but they have been really 
framed in the several colonies, and only at the instance 
of the colonies would they be changed. Canada has prac- 
ti(ially asserted even diplomatic independence, though 
under the Ming of the British Foreign Office, in cases 
where her own interests are alone or specially concerned. 

In the account of financial profit and loss between 
the Imperial country and the colonies the balance has 
been clearly shown, and is generally admitted, to be 
immensely against the mother country. It is doubtful 
whether the balance would be on the right side even in 
the case of the Indian Empire, when the expenses of 
defending the access to it were taken into account. It 
must be debited with a large share of the cost of the 
Crimean war, as well as with standing enmity to 
Russia and with the moral responsibility of upholding 
the execrable rule of the Turk. Money is made, per- 
haps, out of dependencies by great capitalists who 
handle their products, as well as by officials who earn 
salaries by the administration ; but the nation at large 
gains nothing by the political dominion which it would 
not gain by independent trade. 

To the toiling and suffering masses the profits of Em- 
pire are not great. The hideous expanse of squalid 
misery in and around Naples has not been lessened by 
the acquisition of dominion in Abyssinia, while the 
price of necessaries has been cruelly raised by the 



1 8 COMMOXWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 

squandering^ of the miserable earnings of these people 
in bloated armaments. We are presented with harrow- 
ing pictures of the lives and lodgings of the London 
poor. The corpse of a child lies by day upon the only 
bed of a family and at night is put upon their bread 
shelf. A physician, called in to a poor woman and com- 
ing too late, finds her dead body emaciated to the last 
degree and swarming with vermin. What comfort is it 
to these people that they are lords of three hundred mil- 
lions of Hindoos, that they are crushing the independ- 
ence of the South African Republics, and sending puni- 
tive expeditions to reduce the Afridis beneath their 
sway ? What empire do they, or the toilers of the 
United States either, crave so much as liberty to earn 
by their toil all the bread they can and to eat the bread 
they earn? If the white man, American or British, 
wants a burden, he can find it at his own door. 

The example of British Empire in India, however, 
may be profitably studied by those who think of 
launching out into a career of Empire in the belief that 
it is a ''new life." They will see what is the effect on 
the character of the Imperial nation. No other foreign 
ruler of a conquered country has equalled or even ap- 
proached the British rulers of India in the benevolence 
by which, for the last three-quarters of a century at 
least, they have been actuated towards the conquered. 
Yet Loi'd Elgin, an excellent man, .says of the relations 
between the races in liuiia, where he was then sojouin- 
ing, and of which he was afterwai'ds Governor-General : 

"It is a terrible business, however, this living among 
inferior races. I iiave .seldom from man or woman 
since I came to the P]ast heard a sentence which was 
reconcilable with the hypothesis that Christianity had 
ever come into the world. Detestation, contempt, fero- 
city, vengeance, whether Chinamen or Indians be the 
object. Tiicre are some thi'cc or foui' hundred servants in 



COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 19 

this house. When one first passes by their salaaming one 
feels a little awkward. But the feeling soon wears oft', 
and one moves among them with perfect indifterence, 
treating them, not as dogs, because in that case one 
would whistle to them and pat them, but as machines 
with which one can have no communion or sympathy. 
Of course those who can speak the language are some- 
what more en rapport with the natives, but very slight- 
ly so, I take it. When the passions of fear and hatred 
are engrafted on this indiff'eience, the result is fright- 
ful ; an absolute callousness as to the sufferings of the 
objects of those passions, which must be witnessed to be 
understood and believed." 

The atrocities committed by the dominant race in 
quelling the mutiny vied with the atrocities committed 
by the mutineers, and the feeling displayed was such as 
to fill Lord Elgin with horror. 

'' tells me that yesterday, at dinner, the fact 

that government had removed some commissioners who, 
not content with hanging all the rebels they could lay 
their hands on, had been insulting them by destroying 
their caste, telling them that after death they should be 
cast to the dogs to be devoured, etc., was mentioned. A 
reverend gentleman could not understand the conduct 
of government ; could not see that there was any im- 
propriety in torturing men's souls ; seemed to think a 
good deal might be said in favour of bodily torture as 
well ! These are your teachers, Israel ! Imagine 
what the pupils become under such leading ! " A Brit- 
ish soldier, otherwise not noted for inhumanity, sought 
permission to impale or burn alive ; while the cries of 
delirious vindictiveness in England for more blood wei-e 
hori'ible to hear. 

It seems to be well attested that Filipinos are tortured 
to make them give up their hidden arms. On the other 
hand the Filipinos are accused of burying American 



20 COMMONWEALTH OR EMPIRE. 

prisoners alive. Is this the pi-omised reign of ''law, 
liberty, and justice '? Will American character re- 
main imafTccted by this competition in cruelty with a 
half civilized raceV It is hard to be at once a tyrant 
and a fi'eeman : it is easy, as experience shows, to be at 
once a tyrant and a slave. 

Tiiat domestic faction or political distempers of any 
kind can be healed by war or an aggressive foreign 
policy, is a fancy which seems once more to prevail, but 
which suiely stands in little need eithei- of ethical or 
historical confutation. The moral world would be 
strangely ordered if you could cure your own vices by 
making onslaughts on your neighbours. The spirit of 
violence in all its phases is inflamed, not allayed, by 
war. The war of 1812 is sometimes cited as having 
pi'omotcd tiie unity of the nation. Did it not in the 
.sequel give birth to the furious outburst of party vio- 
lence under its hero. Andrew .Tack.son ? 

Empire, if we trust history, would seem to be an illu- 
sion. What Empire could be more magnificent or 
apparently stronger than that of Spain, to whose de- 
crepitude Amei'ican hands have just given the final 
blow? The Spanish possessions in Europe, Asia, and 
America were immense; and they were held together 
by a i)erfectly centralized government and by that 
which, in this case especially, was a vei'y powerful 
bond, complete unity of religion. Yet the Empire not 
only itself decayed, but sapped the life of the Imper- 
ial naiion, whose people neglected domestic industry 
and iutoiiiai iin|)i'Ovement in thqir passion for domina- 
tion .ibioad. and justly forfeited their own lil)erties in 
striving for loid-;liip over otluM- people. We now hear 
that Spain, h.avin.i; lost almost Vho last of her Imperial 
|)ossessions, isshowingsignsol" commercial and industrial 
revival. As the acquisition of Empiic was the bane, 
loss of Empire seems likely to be the cuio. 



